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Comment by larsberg | Hacker News Reader

> Your first job out of college won’t make you or break you

I disagree with this statement. Certainly, if you go to Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple, the choice doesn't matter and you can do whatever after you've learned how to work on real software.

But getting into games and many other fields can be astoundingly difficult even two years out of college, as it's difficult to overcome the "finance," "healthcare," or "consulting" tags once they're on your resume. For better or worse, employers usually only see new college grads as full of potential to do anything; after even a single stint at X, you're branded an X-person.

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Brand yourself as a generalist. It helps if you work for a company that does a whole gamut (from hardware to GUI-level software). Also do side projects in a totally different area from your work. I was (am?) a hw engineer but had no trouble selling myself as a software guy by emphasizing the software work I've done and my side projects. If you still remeber algos and datastructures you can blast through the interview once you get your foot in the door.

Yes, but then you lose the ability to brand yourself as a specialist, and miss out on some of the more lucrative opportunities.

Be careful not to become too good in an area you don't like.

Very true. Your first job isn't going to make or break you, but you'd be surprised how many new grads stumble into an industry and are still working in it 5 years down the road. I was a programmer at a brokerage firm out of college, and after recently getting out of the industry a few jobs later, it'll take a while before my resume is really attractive to non-finance gigs.

I'd love to have more employers pipe up and comment here.

I'm guessing that, although more challenging, changing gears is not altogether impossible (or even very difficult).

Certainly one should develop skills in an area that one is interested in impacting, but this kind of mentality breeds fear and risk aversion because new grads begin to see pursuing interesting opportunities as career risks versus character/skill building.

I think most recent college graduates have bigger issues than worrying about their 'self-branding'. It takes time, and, usually some experience, to build an identity. Sometimes you just have to 'wing-it' and see where that takes you. I'd bet that most employers wouldn't expect a kid fresh out of college to know his/her 'true calling'.

As a manager, I tend to look for potential both when I review the resumes and when I talk to candidates. Most of my questions are open-ended and I try to see if they can bring some of their learnings to the field/role they want to shift to and if they have done their research on why they want to move to a particular field or role.

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